Erin Jane Nelson - Tourmaline - Stella Zhong
Erin Jane Nelson’s practice is grounded in photography sourced from her personal archive of found and original images. Raised in the American South and based in Atlanta, Nelson layers photographic images onto ceramic sculptures inspired by vernacular craft objects. Her practice considers her own lived experience, the rapidly deteriorating natural world, and their nuanced connections.
Tourmaline highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. Her films and photographs rewrite mainstream narratives and cultural histories to initiate a paradigm shift and imagine a more pleasure-filled future. Tourmaline’s practice invites us to fundamentally reshape our beliefs about what is possible.
Stella Zhong creates built environments, cryptic objects, and precisely enacted events to express an urgency for nonconformity. With a naughty approach to astrophysics and anthropology, Zhong builds worlds as propositions and is invested in dislocating the human-centric perspective. By bringing together the unlikeliest objects within incongruent spatial relationships, her work navigates the gap between dissociation and transformation, reassessing notions of belonging and anonymity.